4th and 5th gear not kicking in when cold

paraordnance

New member
Was driving to work this morning and its brutally cold outside. -32 C (-25 F) or -43 C (-45 F) with a windchill. I warmed up truck for about 15 min. Coolant temperature was still going up when I left home. I have about 15 min drive with up to 56 mph speed and I believe transmission was still in 3rd gear or about 2200 rpm. Normally it would run in 5th (1600 rpm) on the same stretch of road. I manually shifted into 4th and rpm lowered to 1900-2000 or so, when I shift to D it goes back to 3rd. Is this normal? I seen this behavior several times and its always happens when cold (below -20 C). Some kind of defence mechanism to warm up tranny? :confused:
 
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I think it's the system computer keeping in the lower gears till the system knows the engine has warmed up enough to shift into higher gears.
 
This is common in computer controlled trannies these days. Trans will hold lower gears a lot longer in order to get the fluid temps up to specs as quickly as possible.
 

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